Review: Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)

“Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.”

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Synopsis

Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

tw: suicide, murder/death

The Verdict

Hello, Internet Police? Yes, I would like to block and report myself for sleeping on this book for so long.

I am so mad at myself for not reading this book earlier. I mean, it’s only been all over my Goodreads timeline since it was released in 2016! I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, well yeah, DON’T! Learn from my mistake because I was hit with instant regret the second I picked this up.

The world of Scythe is one of the most incredible, thought-provoking, and fascinating worlds I’ve ever read in a YA novel before. Basically, humans never die. There is no such thing as illness, diseases, or murder in the world anymore. You physically cannot die unless you are gleaned by a scythe (think priests, but with a license to kill). And it is the job of the scythe to glean a certain number of people per year in order to keep the population under control. This new society lives with no fear, except for a scythe to come knocking on their door, which luckily for them is a very rare occurrence.

The story follows Rowan and Citra, who are chosen to apprentice under the same scythe. Scythe Faraday, takes in interest in both of them due to small acts of defiance they showed towards him when they initially meet. Even though both Rowan and Citra meet Scythe Faraday on two separate occurrences, their fate becomes intwined when they begin their apprenticeship and only one will be ordained as a scythe. And let’s just say the stakes are rather high for whoever does not get ordained. Now, I don’t want to say too much in regards to the plot because you really need to experience this for yourself. However, this book had some of the best plot twists I’ve read in a long time. It’s hard to catch me by surprise and this book really got me. It was so good that I actually had no idea how it was going to end, and usually I’ll have some type of feeling. But all I could do was sit back and be swept away by this world and these characters.

Two teeny tiny reasons why I couldn’t five star this is because at times it was a little slow for me. The beginning of the book has a much slower pace compared to the middle and end. At the same time though, it’s not something I would deduct a whole star for because this is such a complex world, so obviously it would take time to explain it all. The other reason is because the romance between Citra and Rowan was on the weaker side. Don’t get me wrong I am HYPED and all about forbidden love, however, Rowan and Citra’s relationship blossomed so quickly and with almost zero explanation. Like, they weren’t even friends before they became all breathing heavy around one another and sneaking looks while they think the other isn’t looking. I hope we can get some more development on that in Thunderhead.

“Well, she could learn self-control tomorrow. Today she wanted pizza.”

All in all, I am SO GLAD I decided to give this book a chance and pick it up and absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on the sequel! If you enjoy YA, fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian books then do yourself a favor and do not sleep on this book. Seriously, don’t do it. Otherwise you will be like me, swimming in regret for the rest of my life that I didn’t pick this up earlier.